


Drabbles

by Zagzagael



Category: Lawless (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zagzagael/pseuds/Zagzagael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three Lawless drabbles...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drabbles

They were unlike the men she had known as a woman. These Bondurant brothers. But they were just like the men she had known as a girl. Why had she left the country for the city? Why had she left the hard for the soft? But now returned, she remembered how she had grown to despise the earth-worn men of her early life, found them boorish and broad and simple. How she had been exhilarated by the breadth and scope and exquisite care of the street-smart men, so groomed, so debonair. 

And then she saw the soft white underbelly exposed. These city men. Soft and vulnerable and cruel in that vulnerability. She began to hate them. Revolted by their incessant need, their inability to be sated, the endless hunger, lust, and eventual longing. They were unfulfilled in body and in spirit. 

So very different from the simpler yearnings of these country men. Rocks, tethered and anchored. Secure in body and mind. Their rhythms that of the sun and the moon, the seasons of the year the astrolabe of their lives. Clothes designed for a job not a pose struck. Bodies trained by labour required, necessary to living.

She began to see these men, beneath the soiled work clothes, inside of the roughened and scarred skin suits, through a renewed appreciation for them. They were strong, fierce, and steadfast. They offered safety in a growing danger. They offered respite in the brewing storm. The brothers represented worth in worthless times. 

And Forrest. His gaze, held long, looking at her, marveling in a kind of delicious wonderment, his assessment warming her from the inside out until that warmth became a burning heat, she set herself on fire for him.

***

Women. 

He didn’t rightly understand them. Didn’t think he needed chaining himself to one. Didn’t really want one tied to him neither.

Quick furtive moments in the dark. Button yourself back in. Tuck your shirt tails into your trousers, tug down the sweater vest that needs a proper washing. Press the paper bills into her hand. Stumble out and find a bottle. Or three. Rinse off the next morning under the well spigot and sluice all remnants of your coupling into the dirt. 

Girls, aunties, grannies, healing women. Those he understood. And needed. In various ways and means. 

He felt the panic rising in him when Maggie appeared. And the more he moved into her presence he felt that panic turn to sap, rising in the trunk of the tree. Cut him and it would flow. He began needing something he thought he didn’t want. Wanting something he never knew he needed.

Each and every single time they found themselves together he couldn’t help but stare. Not wanting to but not able to stop himself of it. Never in his life had he fed himself through looking before. Didn’t know how hungry he really was. 

***

Maggie had tucked them into the top drawer of the gentleman’s dresser in their bedroom. Howard fished them out and stole down the stairs and into the front room where Forrest’s body was laid out inside the wooden coffin Jack had hammered together. Jack sitting vigil. The sun just pinking the window glass, the hurricane lamp and its yellow glow in the room where they were waking brother, husband, uncle. 

“You got ‘em?”

Howard nodded. 

“Lessee.” 

He handed them to Jack who felt the forbidden weight in his palm. “Good. Yeah. Good.”

The two men walked to the table where the casket was set. Howard reached in, patting for the pocket in Forrest’s vest. His brother’s funeral suit. Jack reached under his arm and slid the brass knuckles into the pocket and Howard folded the coat over the vest. 

“He just might need those. Against angels and devils both.”


End file.
